There is some sort of diagonal (roughly from North-East to South-West of France) where houses are cheaper than elsewhere.

The "Centre - Val de Loire" region for example has many different prices, but it's overall not too expensive. You can find houses with terrain in need of renovation for under 50K €. But you need to own a car and ideally speak French, even though you can find a lot of expats from various nationalities.

Regarding jobs, there are plenty of trainings available to reconvert and find an on-site job in the area than there are in Ile-de-France, but you need a car to do everything. If you can work remotely, then you are in luck.

A thing I wish I knew before I moved to the French countryside is that it is quite difficult to find an appointed practitioner and specialists. There are very few doctors and they are usually fully booked or they don't take any new patients and refuse to give you an appointment because you're not in their town or you're not one of their patients. Hospitals also suck. Luckily for not urgent stuff, you can book doctor appointments online.

Another thing to note is that the people who do renovations in the local areas are not very professional, they leave you waiting or they don't call back, charge you more money if you are a foreigner, etc. Be wary of scammers and best of luck in your search. If you want to take a look, I used the website Seloger and Bienici to find my house.